Always Keep Your Bowler On
by dhawthorne
Summary: How can she be in love with Steed when she never has been, when she has always been in love with her husband? She swore to be with him for better or for worse, in sickness and in health.


Always Keep Your Bowler On

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Disclaimer: I'm about forty years too late and entirely too American to have owned _The Avengers_.  
A/N: Written for lydiabell at LiveJournal who won my help_haiti auction. Big thanks to birdgirl78 for betaing!

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When she has time to reflect on the past two years, she is confused. It is not the years themselves that are confusing, though many of their missions had elements of the bizarre and the unbelievable in them. No, it is the man she spent so much time with, shared everything with, who confuses her even now.

Of course she is in love with her husband, of course she is happy that he has returned to her, so surprisingly. Of course she is ecstatic to know that he is not dead, to have him in her arms, to have him hold her... but it is not the same.

She cannot decide why it isn't the same. Yes, of course he has changed, as has she, and it is not as though she is in love with Steed. Of course she isn't; she can't be in love with him. How can she be in love with Steed when she never has been, when she has always been in love with her husband? She swore to be with him for better or for worse, in sickness and in health.

But hadn't she promised Steed the same thing? When they had gotten into that accident (and it _had_ been his fault, no matter what he believed), and she had agreed to be his partner, hadn't that been for better or for worse, in sickness and in health too? After all, they had relied on each other, taken care of each other... she knew nothing else during those two years.

And she cannot forget those years so easily – how could she? They had been, in the end, the happiest years of her life, the most liberating, the most exciting. She had seen the world, seen the world with Steed and that was different than anything she had ever experienced.

The first time they had kissed had been after that horrendous Christmas party, on their way back to London. Somehow, he had produced a sprig of mistletoe, and how could she resist him? The winter air was brisk and the horses trotted quickly away from that hellhole. His lips had been warm and eager and she was able to lose herself in him with an ease that surprised her. She hadn't felt like that since her husband had disappeared... but she wasn't in love with him.

After that, they had kissed many times, and had gone to bed too, on languid afternoons in his flat, in her flat. They had enjoyed themselves.

She can remember how she felt after that first time, a week after she became the Queen of Sin and he had joined the Hellfire Club, lying on cotton sheets with his arm around her waist, her arms stretched above her head as she sighed in perfect and complete satisfaction. It had been a sunny afternoon, that first time, with cold champagne and bright sunlight and soft sheets – completely different from that smoky, dark night filled with leather and snakes and every imaginable vice.

Their relationship had changed after that, to one of familiarity, one of coyness and complacency. They were smug together, and wrapped up in each other; they fell into bed again and again. They could not help themselves, and she, especially, could not help herself. He still saw other woman, still wined and dined them alongside her, and sometimes she felt pangs of jealousy when she saw the empty champagne bottles on the counter in the morning.

She told herself she had no reason to be jealous; it was not as though she was _in_ love with him, after all. She loved him; he was her closest friend. What they had... she cannot define it, even now.

***

The years continue to pass and she continues to miss him, everything about him, constantly. Her husband is so similar to him in looks, in style, in charisma, (which sometimes makes things easier but always, always makes forgetting harder) everything is just slightly off-kilter. His bowler hat is not worn at precisely the right angle, his umbrella is not that unique shade of pearl-grey, his suit is clearly not fitted by the same tailor. He does not wear red carnations in his buttonhole; his carnations are white.

When he kisses her, those lips are not the same, those arms around her feel different. She no longer has the same passion for him as she once had, and it scares her, makes her feel empty. Instead she sees, when she looks at him, is a man whose bowler hat was always tilted jauntily, whose umbrella shone the same shade as the pearly-grey dawn, whose suit was made for him, and only for him. She sees the red carnation that she so often placed in his buttonhole, an opportunity, in those early days, for her to trace his pectorals with gentle fingertips.

But she no longer sees him – the real Steed and not her memories – though she talks to him sometimes on the telephone. They exchange Christmas cards, too, of course. That is all the contact she has with him. She and her husband move in different circles than the ones she frequented with Steed. She cannot bear to see the people she had known during those two years, cannot bear to see Steed so often, with other women on his arm, when she had so often accompanied him in years past. If her husband had not come back... how can she think like that? But how can she not?

He has a new partner now, a rather insipid girl named Tara King, whom she has met once, briefly, telling her that he likes his tea stirred anti-clockwise. It had been only a few moments after she had kissed him for the last time, a tender and impersonal kiss on his cheek.

She had known, in that moment, that this would be the last time they would be Steed and Mrs. Peel, the two of them, the way they were. She had known it the night before, had carefully planned her last words to him.

'Always keep your bowler on in times of stress and watch out for diabolical masterminds.'


End file.
